When is the last time you ever talked to that contact in your list whom you randomly added once upon a time, via some suggestion or someone else’s profile and the like. Or let’s just talk about your close school friend, or others whom you personally know in the real world.

Life on the Internet is gradually turning saturated, as we keep adding more and more contacts and followers across Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, etc. or on Instant Messengers. It’s one moment we add them, the next moment we forget them altogether and shove them away to the depths of our crammed up contact lists, never to say yet another ‘Hi’. It happens with me, having 500+ contacts is tough!

But, that’s not my main focus. I’m here writing to talk about our personal contacts: old friends, new friends, distant friends, close friends, family, relatives, colleagues, etc. People whom we have interacted with at some part of life in the real world. I would focus more on old school friends, because that’s what I’m going to use here as an example, who is the main inspiration to this blog post.

We should in fact be thankful to the web, for we can instantly communicate with people whom you can’t devote enough time offline. But even then, we tend to forget them as we get indulged into other activities online. Let us, for once, open up our contact lists, and simply drop a.. Hi!

My 33 day uptime.. ok so wtf who goes with all the shutting down PC business? They’re supposed to be “always on” in this age.. hmph! With 50+ tabbed browsers, 50+ messenger conversations, unsaved open files (text files, PS, DW, etc.), open Explorer windows.. WHY the laziness of booting it all back on?

Besides, it could have gone further if it wasn’t for that Monitor replacement on the 33rd day.. had to reboot to switch to new resolution.

I still remember the day he passed away.. it was the 11th day of his stay with us, June 25th, 2004. He had been sick for the last few days. The doctor was supposed to arrive on the previous day, but didn’t. Maybe it was destiny. Maybe it our fate to have his company only for those 11 days, have an experience of being a dog owner, that started the chain ahead of the 4 more dogs who’ve been a part of our lives, the 5th one being with us currently by God’s grace. Maybe he was an Angel, who came to warn us of another loss in our family right after he left us; my Grandfather’s.

After much tantrums and arguments, my little brother’s wish of owning his own pup was fulfilled on 14th June, 2004 when my mom got him a German Shepherd pup. Our family has always been a keen lover of dogs, but we know with the same comes responsibility. Petting a street dog is much different than owning your own. But anyhow, it was an awesome experience with Bruno. Around maybe a month old being his age, he used to mostly stay hidden under the bed all day. I don’t remember much now that more than 5 years have already passed.

“He’s no more”.. I awoke to my mom’s words. Yes, it was the 11th day. It was truly heart-breaking to have lost your very first bond with an animal, that had gradually grown over the past few days. It was a completely different feeling as I guess I haven’t had the same level of emotions ever on any other deaths that I might have seen in front of me. I wanted to cry.. I wanted to let out those feelings.

Back then, “Chiisaki Mono” by Asuca Hayashi, had released for Pocket Monsters movie 6 Ending theme. It was a perfectly touching song to let you into that kind of state. The depiction of the song in the movie was for a similar event: Max losing his new-found friend, Jirachi, after being in the bond for 6 nights. The song starts slow.. with lyrics that go (translated): “I was just quietly watching.. The face of the small one sleeping…”. Within a minute into the song, comes the part that totally uplifts your emotions.. with the lyrics that go “koe ga kikoeru, yuku beki michi yubisashite iru.. (I can hear the voices.. They point to the road which I must go..)”.

The song might make some feel happy, joyful.. or some sad and touched. Depends on how you blend into the immense feelings given by Asuca Hayashi as well as the instrumental music. This was the ONLY Ending song in a Pocket Monsters movie that had the Japanese partially retained even in the English version. So you can imagine Asuca Hayashi plays a major part in giving proper justice to this song. I avoid casually listening to this song because it was played for Bruno, and hence it always reminds me the time. But it’s fine to remember lost ones who never return back, isn’t it?

Original Japanese with English subtitles:

Do check out the English one as well, even tho it further blends into Japanese.

30 NEW INVITES!

Comment below to get nominated.

I finally receive the Inviter wave from Google in my wave inbox, after me being on Wave since October 15 (past 2 weeks).

Since I’ve got a generous 20 invites to spare for all of my dear tweeps & other good friends anxious to try out the new craze, I thought it best to manage a blog entry to list out confirmed invitations & for others to request one from me.

I’m keeping one invite reserved for me, so as to get more invites to share further.

Please comment back on the entry if you wish to request an invite if there is a free slot available in the list below. Please also note that invitations are not sent instantly, it may take upto 2-4 days for it to arrive in your Inbox.

Well I’m a Facebook obsessed person as most of my friends already are aware of, and since I Eat, Live and Sl.. no wait I don’t sleep, Facebook, I quickly realize every minor new aesthetic changes or temporary buggy downtimes that occur on the website. Here’s a few shots I’ve taken over time to display some of the broken elements of Facebook I’ve come across through my addicted experience.

PS: This is in turn only for viewing pleasure of fellow Facebook addicts.

So I just discovered one of the events that compels Windows to start nagging you with the Windows Activation nag dialog box (in case you haven’t done so). While normally it does so at every boot, and during intervals I believe, it is also programmed to nag you at every New Device Driver installation.

I came across a series of nag pop-ups today, which was quite unusual as they kept coming one after the other every few seconds. I then realised my mobile phone was installing some drivers, and upon every installation success, it displayed the Activation reminder.

EDIT: Ok it just struck me it displays so because the ‘Optional update delivery’ in Windows Update is disabled due to non-activation. And because Windows searches for drivers using the Optional Updates, it triggers the nag.

P.S.: I do have a Windows 7 Genuine License. I’ve just been lazy to activate it

Want to give Google Android a try, but don’t feel like buying a T-Mobile G1? LiveAndroid lets you download a LiveCD disc image of the Google Android operating system. Just burn the image to a disc, stick it in a CD-ROM drive, and reboot your computer and you can check out Android without installing it or affecting any files on your PC.

You can also use the disc image in a virtualization application like VirtualBox, VMWare or Microsoft Virtual PC if you want to try the operating system without even rebooting your computer.

So I tried out LiveAndroid myself, and I can say it does look pretty, but most of the functions won’t work anyways, since it’s only supposed to be offered to try out the OS on your computer without having to purchase the mobile phone it is bundled with. As a Google fan, you’re welcome to check out the glory of a Google Operating System before the Chrome OS is out.

Apparently at the time of writing, this doesn’t work on Netbooks yet as I’ve tried on my Lenovo S10 and it wouldn’t advance beyond the bootscreen. Do notify me if it does on yours.

Have you ever felt the need to use designer or other custom fonts on your webpages rather than stay restricted to the limited number of fonts available on user’s’ computers? Sometimes we workaround this issue by using images in place of text when the fonts are only needed for displaying menu items, buttons or other elements that comprise of very little textual matter, so that it doesn’t add up to loading time of the page.

Now this isn’t something new, but only to those unaware, you can also easily embed an online font into your site, and use it throughout the pages retaining the text property on the content. This is implemented via CSS using the @font-face property.

In this manner, you can specify different fonts for different elements on your page i.e. headings, paragraphs, table contents, etc.

The browser downloads the font onto the users’ computer and displays the content accordingly. Note that it might take a few seconds until the font is displayed, as it depends upon the users’ connection for the time taken to download the font by the browser. While Firefox displays the unformatted text until the font is being downloaded, Safari doesn’t.